"To this day Michael Stickler has not provided a full accounting of how the money from that grant was spent," Assistant U.S. Attorney Carla Higginbotham told the jury, during her opening statement in U.S. District Court.

Stickler's lawyers are scheduled to give their opening statements on Wednesday morning.

A 2011 Reno Gazette-Journal investigation revealed the problems with a $1.5 million, three-year grant that Stickler's business, Faith Based Solutions, started receiving in 2007. A year later, a federal grand jury indicted Stickler on a charge of "stealing public money" - the grant funds.

The federal Compassion Capital Fund Demonstration Grant was designed to help community organizations, particularly faith-based groups, secure funds to offer needed services. It was overseen by the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Higginbotham said Stickler submitted a budget for the first installment of the grant - $500,000 - which was to be used to pay salaries, some travel and other needs, including $200,000 that was to be shared with eight other "sub-grantees" - small non-profit groups that seek to help their communities.

But he didn't pay those groups and instead spent the money on his own expenses, she said. When the department asked for receipts for his spending, Stickler could not account for where the money went, she said.

One of the prosecution's witnesses is Lola Montgomery, a federal program specialist who worked on Stickler's grant. In emails messages obtained by the Gazette-Journal through a Freedom of Information Act request, Montgomery told fellow workers that Stickler's company offered "mini-grants" to other companies for $50,000, but he took their money without providing grant-writing services.

"Please look over the correspondence below from yet another mini-grantee which paid for services that were not received," Montgomery wrote in an email to another grant program manager in 2009. "There are compelling indications that this is a pattern of behavior rather than an isolated incident. Even viewed in the most generous light the conduct is ill-advised and unscrupulous."

Other grant workers questioned why Stickler was given the $1.5 million grant in the first place, given the complaints they received from the mini-grantees. Federal officials have never provided an explanation.